Quikrete Industry Dashboard: starts and sales

Housing starts slipped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,309,000 in January, marking the fifth consecutive monthly decline of the closely watched residential construction metric.

Single-family starts also slipped, after a minor rebound in December. Single-family starts are at a pace of 841,000, down from 879,000 in December.

For the full year, total housing starts of 1,554,500 were down 2.9 percent from 2021. That’s the first annual decline since 2009.

Digging a little deeper into the data: Housing permits in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.339 million, dipping just 0.1% and nearly flat with the revised December rate of 1.337 million. The latest permits figure is 27.3% below the January 2022 rate of 1.841 million, however.

Single-family permits slipped 1.8% to a rate of 718,000 from the revised December rate of 731,000. But year-over-year, single-family permits plummeted 40% from a rate of 1.197 million in January 2022. 

Meanwhile, the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly retail sales report shows a gain for building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers (NAICS 444). In January, sales increased to $34.9 billion, up from $33.8 billion in January of 2022.

That growth played out against a backdrop of healthy retail spending across the board. U.S. retail sales in January increased 3 percent – a significant increase over expectations for a 2 percent increase in January.

Elsewhere on the Dashboard, the price of a gallon of regular (on average) stands at $3.42, about a dime lower last year, and a dime higher than last month.